This year’s GWA junior agency day took place on 2nd February at the University of Düsseldorf. The team from DHBW Ravensburg, which consisted of students from the media design and international business courses, was convincing in all categories and scooped up all of the evening’s main prizes. Alongside the Gold award bestowed by an expert jury, the DHBW Ravensburg team also won the audience award and the prize for the best “making of video”.
The GWA Junior Agency Award is a renowned youth competition in Germany run by the Association of German Advertising Agencies (GWA), which represents the leading agencies in Germany.
Gold award, audience award and award for the best “making of video”
Marketing and design students are set the task of creating a PR strategy marketing solution and then outlining their campaign to the jury and audience in a 25 minute presentation. At this year’s competition there were 8 teams from universities all over Germany taking part. Each team was partnered with a professional advertising strategy PR agency to create a campaign for a genuine client.
Image campaign for the “young” Black Forest tourist industry
With support from the qu-int media agency in Freiburg, our group of students from DHBW Ravensburg designed a campaign for the client, Schwarzwald Tourismus GmbH (the Black Forest Tourism Board). While the students from the media design course were responsible for the creative and artistic side of the campaign, the international business studies students dealt with strategic planning and implementation. So at the end of a long semester, and having discarded plenty of ideas along the way, the campaign “Finally something for young people” was created, with the goal of raising awareness of the Black Forest tourist region among young people under the age of 35 and inspiring them to take a holiday there.
In the end our concept not only convinced and delighted the audience at the GWA junior agency day; it also won the votes of the expert jury which was largely made up of agency managers, corporate marketing experts, university lecturers and journalists.
We are particularly delighted that our client, Schwarzwald Tourismus GmbH, has already let us know they will actually be implementing some of our ideas in order to attract more young people to the Black Forest.
Author: Artur Schmal